The Blend: A West Monroe Partners Blog

Blockbuster M&A deals are great for making headlines; what’s not great for making headlines are the write-offs, divestitures, and bankruptcies that follow many failed transactions. Sluggish economic growth, low interest rates, cheap debt, record high equities markets and large cash sums on corporate balance sheets have led to a very “hot” M&A market.…

Execution of an M&A transaction generates thousands of decisions, most of them with minor impact to the investment thesis. But these small and medium decisions often bog down the decision-making process when the distribution of authority is ill-defined and leadership is consistently seeking consensus and/or input from the broader team.

Lessons learned from Uber’s latest power play
When Uber rolled out UberEATS, its newest offering, my project manager and I had to try it out, to be “early adopters” of this cool, new thing. The premise is straightforward: you can now have an Uber driver deliver lunch to your office for a $3 fee via the simple, cashless platform of the Uber app.…

Many mergers fail to achieve their revenue synergy goals and original investment thesis. Why? The most important part of a merger is frequently just an afterthought: the customer and partner experience. For customers and partners, there are many reasons to consider leaving: disruption, possible loss of services or lower service levels, costs to change, strong competitive forces, and an...

With low interest rates making debt cheap, corporate balance sheets with excess cash to exploit on inorganic growth and private equity buyers with record high amounts of dry powder, 2015 is shaping up to be another “white hot” M&A market. A year crowded with hungry buyers. From a supply perspective, valuations are passing pre-recession highs and thus owners realize now is the time to sell...

The End of an Era
Recently, General Mills made another big splash in the food and beverage market with the leaked announcement of a potential divestiture of the Jolly Green Giant (JGG) label. Representing a large portion of General Mills’ frozen food portfolio, Jolly Green Giant accounts for approximately $700 million of the frozen division’s $1.5 billion in total sales and has become a...

Spring time is here and Easter is just around the corner. The sight of an Easter Bunny around town is sure to get children excited about the basket of goodies that he’s bringing, but that same bunny reminded us about a recent project. As we looked at the bunny’s “hopping,” we thought back to a carve-out and merger project when we were continuously faced with the question, “How many hops...

Buyers, take note of different operating models and organizational structures during the diligence phase. If the target companies produce the same product or service, but are uniquely structured, more upfront work will be needed before operational synergies can be achieved. Particularly in the area of human capital, there are three activities organizations should perform in order to realize...

The trust behind the physician-patient relationship has always remained a cornerstone of patient care. In order for a physician to make proper diagnoses and provide optimal treatment, the patient must feel comfortable providing all pertinent details about his or her condition. The physician’s obligation to keep this information confidential is laid out in the code of medical ethics...

As it turns out – a lot, actually…
For the entirety of its existence, baseball has been a ‘numbers game’. Compared to the other major professional sports, it operates within the most straightforward and easily relatable statistical universe. Our society takes comfort in the familiarity of baseball’s individual metrics: 3,000 hits; 500 home runs; a .300 batting average.…

There is no doubt that carve-out transactions are incredibly complex, particularly when it comes to separating operations and systems. While these are the “brass tacks” on the forefront of all transaction decisions, there is another critical factor that can doom a deal if it is neglected – the people. Far too often, key leadership and cultural considerations are overlooked during a carve-out...

Close your eyes and take a minute to envision the future of your business. Where do you want to be next year, over the next five years, and even ten years into the future?
You’ve probably spent a lot of time thinking about size, revenue, profitability and service offerings. The last thing on your mind may be the scalability of core business technology applications.…